


Ser Gendry of the Hollow Hill

by VanillaMostly



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Friendship/Love, Gen, POV Minor Character, getting pumped for GOT final season by rereading Gendrya book moments!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-12
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2020-01-11 23:25:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18434291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VanillaMostly/pseuds/VanillaMostly
Summary: “Someone was shouting her name, Harwin probably, or Gendry, but the thunder drowned them out as it rolled across the hills, half a heartbeat behind the lightning.”-A Storm of Swords





	Ser Gendry of the Hollow Hill

 

They searched for her, for days and days, but they never found any sign of her or the Hound. There was still good chance that she was alive, though. The Hound would need her for his gold... But that was before what happened at the Twins. The day they heard, Harwin shed tears into his thick brown beard. Gendry was too angry to cry, though if there was anyone to blame it’d be himself.

 

_I pushed her away, joining the brotherhood._ He remembered too well the hurt on her face when he knelt to take the vow. He tried to explain to her after that, but she wouldn’t listen. He wasn’t sure how he could have explained it anyhow. There were still some things she was too young to understand, even if she knew too much about everything else. For her, it was simple: if he came with her to work for her brother they’d stay together and everything would be like it was now. But it’d never be the same. Because she’d go back to being a princess and he’d go back to being a bastard smithy. Just like how it was before they’d met.

 

When they found the dead woman in the Trident, for a horrible moment Gendry thought they’d find _her_ body floating in the water too. But they never did. Gendry was relieved, but the relief turned quickly into even worse fear and dread. Where _was_ she, if she wasn’t dead? (And she couldn’t be dead, not someone as fierce and clever as her.)

 

When Lord Beric’s kiss brought the dead lady back to life, and the new leader of the brotherhood turned her bloody eyes on them, Gendry didn’t hesitate. He bent the knee. Later, when the corpses began to hang from the trees, Gendry just watched in silence. And when his brothers started to leave one by one, Gendry chose to stay.

 

Ned Dayne, when he left, had looked at Gendry sadly. “She’s gone, Gendry,” he said, and Gendry wanted to hit him. 

 

Her? _Gone?_

 

This was the girl he’d first known as a little boy, whacking into submission boys twice her size. This was the girl with the stormy grey eyes who’d fought against the gold cloaks, who’d braved through fire for people who didn’t even deserve it, who’d returned to face _monsters_ to save _Gendry’s_ stupid neck. This was the girl who started a whole massacre with a pot of soup, who stuck a blade in a grown man’s belly to allow their escape, who’d grown up in a castle but never complained once about being tired or hungry even when she fell asleep on her horse. This was the girl who always had too much boldness and nerve for her own good. Arya, daughter of the Hand, his most unexpected friend, who had stuck through everything by his side since King’s Landing.

 

He’d never give up on her. He owed her that.

 

But it wasn’t easy.

 

They tracked her to the Inn of the Crossroads, where she was last seen with the Hound, and wrecked havoc, from the sound of it. Gendry almost grinned when he heard. That was the Arya he knew.

 

But that seemed to be a dead end. There was no more sighting of her after that; no news of her or anywhere in the Riverlands. They heard about an Arya Stark in the North who had been wed off to the Bastard of Bolton, but the time course wasn’t right. Besides, that Arya Stark was said to have been taken from King’s Landing from the hands of the queen, and Gendry knew better than anyone this couldn’t be true. Whoever the girl was, it wasn’t Arya. Gendry prayed it wasn’t anyway. This Bastard of Bolton made the Hound sound like a furry pup.

 

Days passed into months. Gendry wanted to keep searching, but it got to the point that even Harwin thought it was futile. 

 

It was almost hard to say which was more painful: the thought that Ned Dayne was right, and there was no god, Arya was dead; or that she was still alive and safe somewhere, but she had chosen to stay away.

 

Because why hadn’t she come back? She must know her mother was here. She must know _Gendry_ was here. Gendry knew it was stupid of him to think he was as important to Arya as her lady mother, but it didn’t stop him from taking it personally that Arya wasn’t coming back.

 

He started to dream the bad dreams, dreams that had him gasping for air. In some of the dreams she was twirling with a skinny sword in her hands, dancing out of his reach, ever so graceful. In some she was laughing and dodging him, slipping from his grasp like a slippery fish, taunting, “Come and catch me!” But the most terrible dream was the one where she was on horseback. She was too fast and he was too slow, and he could only see the small of her back, disappearing in the rain before the darkness swallowed her whole... In this dream, no matter how much he shouted her name, she never looked back. Just as it had been the last time he saw her.

 

He tried to forget these dreams when he was awake, drowning them out with the _bang_ of his hammer in the forge. With every pounding brought on steel he envisioned it was the Hound’s face under his blows, or the Bastard of Bolton, or better yet, that stupid useless one of his own. He didn’t know which he hated most.

 

He had to keep believing though. That Arya was somewhere out there, still waiting to be found.

 

Gendry was going to forge the most beautiful sword, and then he was going to embark on his own quest to find her.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> my theory for the book readers!!!! (***SPOILERS for AFFC/ADWD***) when Jaime and Brienne get captured by the BwB and Gendry finds out that they're looking for Sansa Gendry will be all like "excuuuse me but Arya's also alive why aren't you looking for HER" and they will be like "wtf really" and then Gendry will be like "I'll free you guys on the condition you help me find her" so he does. And they go looking for Arya together. With Hot Pie.


End file.
